


Overflow

by EpiphanyWisps



Series: Specimen Z and C [2]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Angst, Blood, Delusions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Graphic Description, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mako Poisoning (Compilation of FFVII), Memory Loss, Multi, Non-Consensual Somnophilia, Other, POV Cloud Strife, Rape/Non-con Elements, Somnophilia, Whump, Whumptober 2020, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:08:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27191515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EpiphanyWisps/pseuds/EpiphanyWisps
Summary: Zakkura themed Whumptober for this year.I decided to participate late in the month, but I also don't like time restraints so the chapters will be uploaded as I fill them for a better experience. All prompts will be used or combined for 31 chapters of individual one-shots. Adding tags as I go along, for obvious reasons.
Relationships: Zack Fair/Cloud Strife
Series: Specimen Z and C [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952710
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





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**Author's Note:**

> The prompt for this chapter is: Betrayal / Broken Trust.
> 
> Cloud's POV while Zack and Cloud are on the run.

Cloud doesn’t remember the moment when he started to drown under the delusions of the mako. He doesn’t remember when his consciousness was forced away inside himself. He doesn’t remember when the voices started tearing through his skull and pulling at him until he felt like he was going to tear apart. The voices came with claws and only gave him headaches, and the mako bled poison into his limbs until he was too numb to move. He was trapped inside a world where there was no exit, and no way to find a way to safety.

He doesn’t remember much of who he was before, and most of the time he doesn’t have the strength to question who he’s supposed to be now. With the mako still running rampant through his bloodstream and the voices boxing him in, all it does is make him retreat further inside himself.

He doesn’t understand what’s happening around him half the time. Not in the real world. He doesn’t even have the presence of self to realize that he still exists outside of the confines of his mental prison. It’s a fatal dream he’s trapped in instead, looped with voices that overlap and demand his attention all at once. It’s laced with pain and laden with a promise of more to come unless he finds a way he can break free. The voices keep steady with their words and their claws and they squeeze him like a vice until he’s screaming inside.

Realistically, it doesn’t last forever. But he no longer carries the concept of time. All that he knows is that it’s so dark, but so bright where he is. And all he knows is pain.

Cloud regains some of his life back as the days go on, as time progresses without his acknowledgement. It comes and goes at a slow pace and only leaves traces for him to remember. But it’s a confusing mess he often doesn’t have the capacity to piece together inside his mind. What’s real and what’s in his head are usually dangerously close concepts.

He can feel when there’s pain in his stomach even though he can’t recognize it’s because it’s empty. Sometimes it’s because he’s sick, which he also fails to recognize even while he’s puking so hard that his chest spasms in the hours after from all the stomach acid burning through it.

Cloud’s mind has already forgotten what it really means to be hungry or sick. His body aches too much for him to try and recognize one thing over the rest and process the information on most days. His mind is still too ill, still so muddy with his thoughts that it’s almost too much to try and concentrate.

Cloud is also used to feeling pain when he hears the voices, and especially when the shadows hover over him. So, when the pain starts climbing into the base of his skull and spreads out into a migraine, he knows they’re coming for him. But there’s nowhere to go while he’s still locked away inside himself. It’s all he can do to try and hide and hope they won’t hurt him too bad that he won’t be able to wake up.

When it gets bad and the claws dig in too deep, he thinks he can hear an echo of himself crying out in pain from somewhere else. The shadows mimic that too, replaying his own voice again of him moaning in pain while his blood paints the ground and leaves him feeling empty and afraid. He lays there curled into a fetal position, as though it’s going to provide enough cover, over a broken cobblestone pathway that he forgets the location of inside his memories and tries not to break down and let the voices sink in and consume him.

On the better days when he’s able to shake some of himself free, Cloud can sometimes tell when he thinks the ground is moving. He thinks maybe sometimes his toes can feel the drag of his boots in the dirt.

Sometimes he can’t help it when there’s a warm wetness running down his thighs. It’s usually followed by pressure from somewhere inside that makes him feel uncomfortable, when his bladder is too full and his mind can’t register what that’s supposed to mean. It doesn’t happen often that he can remember, either pissing himself or soiling his clothes when he least expects it, but it happens enough that Cloud wishes he wasn’t aware.

He’s constantly in some kind of pain, whether it’s mental or physical, and whether he recognizes it for what it is or not. It doesn’t matter, because in the end he can’t do anything about it. He doesn’t remember how to speak even if he wanted to, or even if there was someone to tell his troubles to.

His limbs refuse to cooperate even in the moments where he thinks he can muster the strength to move them. He’s trapped inside himself where he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to learn to live, or how he’s supposed to struggle free when he can’t see the way out. It’s a frustrating and unbearably lonely maze inside his head.

But some days, when he’s conscious enough and more able to crawl out of his headspace, he can feel the warmth from the sun on his skin. It’s something he comes to enjoy as the season changes and the temperature around him shifts.

Sometimes though, the air is too warm and too dry, makes his throat feel like sand paper and his body feel too hot under clothes he doesn’t realize he’s wearing. When he gets hot enough, he’s able to register the heat. He becomes aware that he feels too hot, and that whatever is covering him he wants to remove just to feel cooler. The mako won’t give him the chance. The power it still holds over his mind and body keep his words locked inside and his body too heavy with lethargy to move. He can’t do anything aside from release the pain the only way he can, in syllables and sounds he knows probably mean nothing to anyone listening in.

The warmth of the weather doesn’t last long. His mind shuts off more than he understands, and before he realizes how much time has passed between one blink and the next the air is suddenly too cold.

Sometimes the sun goes away and stays away, and the coldness it leaves behind just sinks in to his bones and makes his body shake beyond his control. He can’t do anything about that either. He tries to float back into unconsciousness, where he won’t have to feel the chill against his skin. Because it only fills him with trepidation from memories he can no longer remember.

But then, Cloud becomes all too aware of something else while he’s stuck inside himself. While he’s trying to escape the pain of the real world, he’s forced to become aware that he doesn’t have much of himself left to offer the world he’s trying so hard to find his way back to. Most of what he’s had has been long since stripped away and thrown off to the side. What remains of him isn’t much, but he’s still trying. Even when he’s in so much pain and feeling bitter about his own weaknesses and he forgets why it’s such a bad idea to just give in to the darkness.

Vocalizations become his primary functions when he feels his consciousness flicker into some semblance of recognition as time progresses, but his body won’t let his throat relax enough to let them free unless he’s conscious enough or in enough pain to become aware of something other than what’s in his mind.

On some days, Cloud’s conscious enough to know when he’s laying against something that’s too hard and too sharp against his bony shoulder blades, but he can’t do anything to help himself aside from sitting there in silence.

Sometimes his legs hurt, radiating a dull ache up to one side of his hips when he’s been laying down in a certain position for too long. He has to deal with that too, not even able to blink out of order when he tries to move outside of his own body’s reflexes.

He never understands what the things are that hurt him outside of his mind, but he knows he doesn’t like it. It hurts him in a different way, but it’s pain all in the same.

And _then_ , sometimes he thinks he can hear things around him that aren’t just the voices and the white noise surrounding them in his head. Sometimes one of the voices rises up above the rest. And sometimes he feels pressure against his skin.

Cloud doesn’t know what to think of it at first, his fragile mind constantly weary of the unknown. He tries to block it out in the beginning, trying to save himself from yet another farce from the shadows that try to lure him in and take control.

The days drag on endlessly that way with Cloud’s body still too sick to do anything and his mind too weak to pull through. Cloud rarely is able to register the changes from day to night, making the episodes he’s forced to endure inside his mind feel like an eternity. The sensations of fear and pain like to bleed out into the real world if he’s not careful. It difficult though, when he’s already struggling just to regain something as simple as his awareness or mobility.

It’s only after months of this weird sense of reality, without having the cold sting of mako constantly seeping into his skin and keeping him trapped, that he’s finally able to register some of the smaller details.

He’s still alive, for one. He’s a someone that still exists in the world, though he forgets what he’s called by, or even what he’s supposed to look like. His skin is very pale though, he knows that from how much time he’s spent with his head sagging between his shoulders. He knows how sickly transparent the skin of his arms looks against the darker shade of his pants.

There’s that voice he’s been trying to smother too, the one that he used to hear sometimes that he fought to keep in the darkness. It starts to shine brighter above the rest swirling through his thoughts the more Cloud becomes aware of it.

It’s one voice, spoken with different words, but usually spoken with the same tone each time Cloud hears it. That helps Cloud pick it out more easily from the rest. It doesn’t carry that same darkness with it that hurts his head, and it doesn’t come at him with claws that try to tear into his skin. Little by little, Cloud finds that there might just be a voice somewhere that isn’t trying to hurt him. It’s a nice voice, Cloud decides.

It’s one that he starts to find comfort in listening to the longer he picks it up, and something that brings a strange sense of familiarity to him. It becomes his nightlight inside the darkness, and he finds himself gravitating towards it even though he doesn’t understand why. It’s just a voice he doesn’t remember a face to and he shouldn’t feel any kind of attachment to it, but he’s becoming more aware of himself. He slowly starts to seek that voice out amongst the crowd of other faceless voices inside his head the more he recognizes its frequency.

But Cloud is still sick and fighting for control over what should already be his. His consciousness comes and goes like a fading lightbulb during a turbulent storm the more he tries to remember not to forget things he gets reacquainted with, closely accompanied with a flurry of headaches that make the backs of his eyes hurt. Some days are better than others.

Mostly, he becomes accustomed to what his boots look like and the terrain as it passes under him when he’s being moved. He doesn’t understand the moving part most days, but he can still hear that voice; the one that makes his chest feel warm when he feels cold inside, and one that makes his head feel a little lighter against the pressure of his headaches. So, it’s alright.

It isn’t long after that, Cloud starts recognizing that there’s a presence that seems to be connected to that voice. It’s a presence that scares him at first, similar to the way the voice had. Mostly because well, Cloud thought he was alone. In the real world, that is.

Surrounded by voices and feeling mostly dead to the world around him, something from his past told him to expect to be alone. That whatever happened, dead or alive, there was no one left for him to hold on to. Cloud couldn’t really remember the details, just that his mind kept telling him everyone was gone. There was no reason for him to fight against the shadows anymore.

He doesn’t remember Shinra or returning to his hometown, and he doesn’t remember anything that happened after. Cloud doesn’t remember the labs beneath the mansion. He doesn’t remember nearly dying multiple times as his body and mind nearly failed him right on that cold metal table with his skin peeled back and his insides fully on display.

He doesn’t remember the name of the other person there that used to talk to him when he felt hopeless, or the hand he always offered for Cloud to take. But he remembers there was someone there once. There’s a still image of a hand in front of his face between two thick bars. There’s no voice to go by, no presence to feel, and nothing else to go by. Just an outstretched hand in his direction.

Cloud may have forgotten a lot, but the remnants of his trauma from the isolation and experiments still exists. It presents itself in the shadows that lurk at the corners of his consciousness and sit too heavily against his chest when he tries to sleep. The shadows bring him a great deal of anxiety when he has no idea how to control his own thoughts. They sit there and burn tiny holes into his skin, leaving Cloud feeling awful inside and unable to escape.

So, it’s a shock to realize this new presence is from someone else and not just another voice inside his own head. It’s an even bigger shock when that presence doesn’t leave him, and instead of bringing pain it brings small moments of comfort to him. Like covering Cloud’s skin when the air is too cool, or splashing him with something cool and wet when the air is too hot and far too dry.

The shadows make sure he never gets too comfortable to fully wake up though, that he doesn’t forget what it feels like to be aware. They’ve been making sure up until this point he understands that pain is customary to feel. Cloud always expects to feel some kind of pain when he’s more aware of himself. It’s happened too many times in the past that he can’t forget.

Cloud knows it’s something he _should_ fear when he’s aware. Because being aware means he’ll be aware of the pain his body is constantly in. But slipping back into his mind isn’t as painless either. He can’t escape either way, but even as he looks at the shadows and the memories of fear and pain escalate within him, sometimes retreating back into his mind is better than being aware and having no way to move from the physical pain.

Cloud starts to become aware too much too many times. It scares him more than he’s able to voice- which he tries to. He becomes more aware of the physical pain as it meshes with the mental agonies he’s still fighting against.

As time passes, he finds it harder to slip back into unconsciousness and escape at least one source of the pain. He has to be aware and wait for the different pains to begin. He has to wait, and he has to suffer through it. All he has is his voice to try and let it out, because his brain is still disconnected from his body and his limbs are still too heavy to move.

That familiar voice helps, Cloud thinks. The one with the tone he enjoys listening to. And that presence, too. The one that doesn’t make him afraid. He starts to feel more like it’s attached to the voice.

He thinks that sometimes he _feels_ that presence too. It feels it like pressure at his side and stricter pressure points against his skin when he’s stationary. He feels it when his stomach hurts and he can’t do anything about it, when the voice returns to comfort him and the presence feels close against him.

The pressure of those touches moves over his tongue and helps him swallow down what his body needs to survive, to fill his stomach so he won’t have to be in so much pain. That presence helps him when the shadows get too close and he can’t help but cower. The voice surrounds him just as the presence does, and together they chase away the shadows until dawn.

That voice belongs to another person, Cloud realizes much later. The presence he feels has to belong to the same person the voice does. The familiar one. The comforting one. But who is it? The shadows keep telling him that everyone he knows is already gone whenever he closes his eyes. They won’t stop reiterating, even though the good voice tries to rise above them and drown them out.

Cloud tries not to concentrate on it. He tries not to see it as a bad omen for things to come. Because if that’s the case, what if no one’s really there beside him? What if this is all an elaborate a trick that his mind has made up for him to believe?

Cloud tries to reach out sometimes to see for himself, when it’s painful inside and he wants run away from all the noise and hide away in the familiarity of that presence the good voice provides. His muscles are still too weak to respond physically, which doesn’t do much to help his case. It leaves him anxious. If he can’t do anything, will that person still be there beside him in the end?

He resorts to the only thing he has now. He parts his lips and lets the sounds come out and just hopes that he’s understood. That whoever it is that helps him chase away the pain won’t disappear, and that they’re real enough that Cloud doesn’t have to feel bad for believing in it. He never knows what he’s trying to say or even if he’s understood at all. But he knows the voice will talk back the more he tries. That voice and that comforting presence will get closer the more he tries to let the words out and be heard. There will be pressure on his body and he’ll be warm, and he’ll feel less alone.

It's easy for Cloud to forget he’s still a prisoner in his own body when the other person is near. But there are worse days just as there are the good days. The pain still lingers in his body just as it does in his head. It never stops, although the voice he’s come to seek comfort from helps to dim it some.

He can’t tell the difference from what’s in his head to what’s going on around him when the days are bad. His vision is always the worst on those days, mostly just muddy colors surrounded by spiraling frames of green inside a dark abyss.

He starts to believe that it’s alright to let go a little as long as the person with the good voice is beside him. The shadows have to be wrong. He’s still got someone left he can confide in that’s real and not just in his head. He’ll find a way out this hell. The fact that he can still hear that voice and feel its presence is enough to drown out the dread of whether or not there even _is_ a way to climb out of the darkness.

The season changes again, and Cloud is too busy fighting off a fresh wave of withdrawal symptoms from the mako his over intoxicated body has been trying to rid itself of to notice. The cold air becomes warm again. The flowers bloom and the leaves return on the trees. 

Cloud’s consciousness slips away from him for the longest time. He’s forced back inside his own mind where he can’t run from the shadows or their claws. They whisper to him while they catch up to him, where they dig in under his skin and rip apart his smaller organs.

He tries to hide from them, knowing that if he dies too quick in this suspended reality, they’ll just revive him and begin again until he finally gives in. They tell him awful things. The shadows try to break his spirit by shattering his memories so that they no longer feel connected to him. They try to claw their way inside his body and inside his mind and hollow him out so they can fill in the rest for their own desires.

It’s so tiring to keep running, but Cloud does. Sometimes he forgets why he still runs. The shadows tell him it would be easier to give in, let them win instead of fighting back and let them take what little he has left just so that he doesn’t have to feel the constant pain. Honestly, sometimes it almost sounds like the more peaceful option.

But he still has someone he’s fighting for. There’s still one person who stays by his side in the real world that he needs to get back to. The one with the good voice, right? Cloud runs even though his body aches and his blood springs free from tears in his skin and leaves a trail behind him. He runs like he isn’t in pain and desperate to find the echo of that one voice in the darkness, like it’s the only way he’ll be able to find his way out.

Eventually, he does find that voice. But it comes at a price. The shadows have kept him hidden away for too long. They’ve kept him stunted and alone so long that Cloud doesn’t realize he’s not the only one that’s been affected.

Something must have happened out in the real world while he was away under the influence of mako and the remnants of shadows inside his mind, a trigger point in events that has somehow changed things.

Cloud is still half inside his head with an awful headache and too used to the grim atmosphere he was forced under. It feels like something dark and foreboding is thick in the air when he’s finally able to return to the voice he’s missed so much.

His consciousness returns on a day where his comprehension is a little worse for wear and his eyesight is so bad that almost all he sees is a green haze. The atmosphere is colder than he’d like, it feels like the winds sweeps right over his skin instead of against his clothes. And although he can’t hear the voice right away, he can still feel the presence behind it. It provides a little bit of comfort.

The situation is different this time, different from the many other times he’s become aware and noticed the details. They’re surrounded by wetness this time when he comes to, something he thinks he’s noticed before in the moments when he was aware. It’s water. He remembers water, but his mind won’t let him remember for what reason he would feel it trying to consume him from the waist down. His mind is still thick with confusion and rapt with poison. It won’t let him think almost at all to try and understand what’s going on.

It feels like he can barely stand above the surface the way he is now with his feet barely touching the ground level under the water. The person he’s come to rely on must be the one holding him up under his arms, but it still feels like he’s sinking. Cloud is still too weak to regain control over his body and help himself stay afloat. If the water rises any higher, he knows he’ll drown. While he’s still half inside himself and groggy from his mako poisoning, his lack of knowledge just makes him feel uneasy.

The water is almost to his chin, threatening to overtake him and swallow him whole when he feels pressure against his bottom and his thighs. He’s lifted then, placed with his back against something more solid as he wades in the water. The weight under him keeps him afloat enough that Cloud doesn’t panic anymore.

That’s when the voice returns, and Cloud is nothing but grateful for it. It’s the same, nice, soothing voice Cloud has been searching for. Cloud still doesn’t understand any of the words being said, but he likes the sound of that voice. He takes enough from it that it brings him comfort just by the tone.

Cloud wants to be able to return the favor. He wants to let that voice know how much he wants it to stay. Consumed for the first time with the need to feel like he isn’t alone, he wants to be able to reach out and feel the person it’s connected to. He wants to let the voice know that he still hears the words even though he doesn’t understand them. He wants to be able to see who it is that’s with him. The only one who didn’t go away. The one who stays and chases away the shadows and the claws that rip him apart, and the one that fills him with enough purpose to try and pull through.

His vocal chords feel tight today though. They won’t let him release more than a few strained sounds out in response. Cloud can only hope it’s enough.

There’s more pressure along his skin as the presence crowds him. It brings Cloud hope that he’s doing enough in return. Because that familiar presence is against his chest and somehow all over him all at once.

Honestly, it’s nice. It lets Cloud forget that his head is throbbing while the other person is this close. Maybe they’re using their hands to touch him. It would make sense, Cloud thinks. They cover different areas of his body and massage into his sore and unused muscles.

Water splashes over him, and the light touches of blunt and harmless fingers linger over his skin. That’s nice too. The voice returns when the touches push against him harder, down over his stomach where Cloud still aches inside from not having eaten in a while.

Cloud still can’t find the right words he knows he needs to say. He still can’t remember how to string them together to be coherent enough to be understood. He tries to let some sort of sound out and hopes it won’t be too silent against the sound of trickling water and the leaves swaying in the wind from somewhere in the distance.

Their little dance of words and sounds continue, of feather light touches and prodding against Cloud’s skin. It’s only when the tone changes, when the tone of that voice starts sounding different, that the overall tone of the situation changes. It’s an unexpected wavering pitch and new to Cloud’s ears. At first, he doesn’t know what to think about it.

Then, the voice speaks again and there’s more pressure against his skin. It feels more persist than the last. It feels like his head is being turned a different way, and something warmer than the water, but just as wet presses over the side of his neck and applies pressure. The newness of it bleeds apprehension into Cloud’s uncertain stability, the change seeming to happen so fast and bringing too much and all at once that it takes his breath away.

For a moment, the voice he’s become so accustomed to almost blends into the crowd of the others inside himself and gets lost among the shadows. Cloud isn’t aware of the next involuntary sound he makes through his fear, but he must have said something, because the voice actually responds to it with a similar sound.

There’s pressure at different parts of his body again, just like before. But when the voice he relies on starts to fade in and out Cloud thinks he feels his consciousness slipping more into a delusion. Some of the pressure presses harder into his skin and brings with it a bruising pain, prodding against him and sliding over his skin. Cloud doesn’t understand what it means, or what he’s supposed to do with it. He’s not used to feeling anything but comfort from the other person out in the real world. This is new, and it’s almost terrifying. He thinks he must not be fully aware yet, somehow trapped halfway in his head that the delusions are beginning to bleed into his reality.

Different sounds are heard, and Cloud feels his body is being moved. There’s nothing he can do to fight against it. One of his arms is lifted out of the water, but for what reason he can’t understand.

There’s a sudden pinprick of pain once over his elbow, followed by something warm that slides up his arm, and then another moment of pain along his shoulder. The surprise of the pain has more sounds coming out of him that are more reflex than anything.

He’s not aware of how he’s supposed to react, but he thinks the shadows are still trying to find their way to him and take him back to the corners of his mind.

The presence is still there though, which confuses him. It’s so close and so warm, but it does little to take the pain away. He tries to call out to the voice that’s connected to it, to call out for help in hopes that it will come to his aid and blanket the pain and apprehension he’s feeling. But whatever sound he makes next apparently makes it worse, because there’s more pain after that, and in more places.

It slides over his shoulder blades like nails digging into his skin and comes around to sink into his chest. They press into his skin, not like the claws Cloud is more used to, but sharp enough that he can feel a bit of pain under the pressure.

Cloud strains his ears to listen. He doesn’t know where the good voice went to. He doesn’t know how to wake up enough to get his eyes working again, to find where the comfort has gone through it all. He’s blinded by the poison and lost in the sea of thoughts and memories that keep him locked away inside himself.

This doesn’t feel right. He can’t imagine where the presence that’s attached to the good voice might be, because it can’t be the one that’s surrounding him now. It’s been replaced, has to have been. And in its place is a different voice, one that makes Cloud feel uncomfortable the moment he hears it. The tone is all wrong. The words he can’t understand are laced with darkness and fill his stomach with dread.

Cloud worries that he’s still somehow trapped inside his head, or that the shadows have found a way to pull free from their confines before Cloud can.

This feels different though, not fully what it seems. Cloud thinks he can still hear the good voice a little here and there and feels the pain intermittently, but he also still feels that presence he’s come to seek comfort from. It’s so confusing. The pain is on the outside, not the inside when the other voices try to hurt him. This feels different, and it starts to scare him because he just doesn’t understand.

But then his useless body is moved again, and Cloud can do nothing to stop himself from having his body bend over solid and rigid lines of what feels like Earth and grass. He’s held there, his body half in the water and half over the earth. Warmth and pressure glides over his back and against his neck, where the pain escalates in little nips and soothes under an odd sensation of warm and wet.

The voice lights up more then, still sounding so much like the good voice. The presence pressed up behind him shifts and tightens its grip over Cloud’s skin. What he can recognize as fingers grip at Cloud’s hip and pulls him back, moving him closer than ever. Something light and fibrous tickles his skin, hair maybe, as more of the wet pressure from before marks a path over his back, rising up to one of his shoulders where another hand moves to grip him.

A different, more acute pain blindsides him then in the short moments after, completely unexpected from somewhere down between his cheeks where he feels like he shouldn’t feel it. It’s a brief moment of pain that stops immediately the moment Cloud feels himself groaning through the pain. It’s followed by a weird mix of the bad voice and the good voice, and honestly just makes Cloud feel sick. The voice speaks close to his ear while the same wet pressure from before pecks along the side of his neck that’s bared to the sky.

The pain is bright and piercing and sends a shockwave of pain up his spine the more it builds. It makes him feel like he’s choking on his own tongue when he tries to scream, knowing that what actually comes out is nowhere near what it needs to be because his lungs won’t cooperate.

It’s so painful right from the beginning, and so strange because he can’t understand why it feels like the pain is moving. It feels like it starts on the outside where his skin stretches and burns, but it’s quickly forcing its way to somewhere inside him where he’s not used to feeling it so deeply. It’s a pain that’s much different from the dissociated feeling of the claws tearing into him inside his mind. Because those wounds aren’t real.

This though. This _must_ be real. It feels like his skin is tearing wherever the pain is, his nerves springing to life like they’re on fire.

The pain keeps climbing, digging deeper, until he can feel his thighs shaking and threatening to cramp under the stress of the pain and stifling pressure between them.

He wants to scream out so badly, scream for whatever or whoever is attached to the good voice to come back and chase away the pain. He can’t find his way out of the darkness that’s keeping him held down. He can’t even see, let alone defend himself.

The pain dulls a bit after a while, maybe because his mind isn’t attached to his body like it used to be. He can’t tense his muscles any more than he can move them. Maybe it helps with the pain. But it’s still there. And it’s still moving. It gets sharp in intervals where it forces up inside at odd angles, feels more like he’s being stabbed when it tries desperately to go in deeper.

But the pain gets worse before it gets better. Cloud’s limbs and his body are used like a puppet to lift his legs and pin them, and the pain moves in deeper. It pushes harder against his insides until he fears something will rupture.

The water blanketing his lower half feels warm, but it feels warmer between his legs where the pain is. He feels like he’s suffocating, the warm pressure of the pain and the strange sensation of liquid mixing somewhere in his bowels and between his legs.

There’s also a more solid pressure in his chest from whatever part of the ground his upper half is pressed against. Cloud thinks maybe his knees are against where he’s bent forward somehow, the pain giving him the awareness to make the assumption it’s against a ledge of sorts that separates him from the water.

But it’s making it hard to breathe. His face is mostly pressed into the dirt and the grass. He can’t even lift his head up to try and help himself. Instead, he nearly inhales the loose bits of the earth against the side of his face each time his body is pushed more firmly into it.

His body rocks with the movement of the pain. It pushes him against the solid pressure he’s bent against and stops him from inhaling properly. All he can manage is letting the wind get knocked out of him and groan out at the pain he’s feeling.

The voice starts changing again. It starts sounding more like the good voice, but broken. Cloud hears it as though it’s somewhere near to him, moving and faltering in broken syllables. It’s confusing, making him anxious and eager than ever to try and find his voice, to reach out with it and hope the other with the good voice will hear him.

And then the presence of the body behind him presses completely against him, nearly crushing him to the ledge he’s against. Fingers dig painfully into his skin. The voice Cloud thinks is the good voice sounds completely broken now. The pain slows inside of him, surrounds itself by a different kind of warm wetness that feels different from the water. It dulls the ache, even though the pain doesn’t stop. It lessens the pain, or maybe the pain just becomes less. But it feels less like it’s stabbing, and more like it’s throbbing. Definitely more tolerable.

But then, just as quickly as the pain began, it stops moving inside. It leaves him aching from all the friction, and feeling sickly and full. Then it moves away altogether, his legs still trembling and his insides twitching through the tremors of pain in the aftermath. His insides definitely hurt, even after whatever was causing the pain leaves him. He still feels full, and he’s still sick to his stomach because of it.

Cloud is more aware now of the feeling of hands over him. They lower his legs and rub over his thighs, his bones aching from the strain and his muscles quivering from the pain. More of those warm, wet touches along the back of his neck. It does little to calm the quake in Cloud’s heart over not being able to understand what just happened to him.

He somehow feels like the good voice is to blame for the pain this time, even though he doesn’t have the evidence he needs to make that conviction. But the voice he used to enjoy and the presence that felt so warm didn’t protect him. Not this time. They encircled him this time and covered him in bruises and pain that no one else can see. That, or that the bad voices from the shadows are trying to lure him by making him believe it’s the good voice when it isn’t.

For an awful amount of time it has Cloud confused and afraid. He keeps himself mostly silent from then on for a while, unsure of everything and nothing at the same time. The good voice starts to drown itself out and fade under the darkness of something much darker when the presence touches him. It comes to Cloud and brings pain, and Cloud never knows why. It welcomes Cloud and coaxes him to come closer with the same wet pressure against his skin and fingers that push and pull him, nails still digging in and pain between his thighs that he might never understand the concept of.

Cloud hopes with everything he has left that the voice that’s disappeared will return to him. One day, maybe. But not today. Today, there’s only more pain.


End file.
